During our recent South Africa Mission we were able to visit a number of monuments, museums and battle sites. While some of these museums are well run and carefully maintained by diligent and committed people, those that are in state hands are often mismanaged and we saw evidence of attempts to hijack history. It was Karl Marx who declared that "the first battlefield is the re-writing of history".

The Battle over History

It is critically important that we seek to preserve and treasure our history from a Christian perspective. It was shocking to visit the Mission Church Museum in Long Street, Cape Town and see how all the beautiful wooden free standing displays of Missions, Churches and Missionaries who established Christianity in South Africa have been taken off the floor, folded up and are collecting dust and cobwebs upstairs, behind the organ. Political, ANC, Mandela and Islamic propaganda displays have been set up obscuring the Bible displays and part of the pulpit area, in what is the oldest place of worship still standing in South Africa.

Forgotten Heritage

Even many independent schools are not visiting Christian monuments such as the Huguenot Monument and Museum, or the Castle, but are allowing the children to be railroaded into politically correct propaganda day trips.

Christian Heritage Museums Needed

There is a desperate need for suitable buildings to be made available for an independent Christian Heritage Museum. The Reformation Society has been accumulating artefacts, maps, posters, pictures, books and manuscripts on our Christian heritage and producing PowerPoint presentations and Church History Overview to empower Christian school teachers with Providential History. With suitable venues, we can set up inspiring, God-honouring displays and presentations to inform and inspire students, tourists and history enthusiasts with our Christian Heritage and a vision to fulfil the Great Commission in our generation.

Creation Science Museum

There is also a real need for a Creation Science Museum in South Africa. The Creation Museum near Cincinnati has been a tremendous success. We visited the Science Festival at the 1820 Settlers Monument in Grahamstown and were struck by the need for Christian ministries to be better represented at such events. As we have Creation Scientists such as Dr. Philip Stott and Dr. Angela Stott in South Africa, sponsorship needs to be arranged to ensure that their Scripture and Science ministry is prominently represented at such Science Festivals in the future.

Discipling Nations

We are involved in a world war of worldviews. A Clash of civilisations. In this battle for hearts and minds, museums, monuments, textbooks and teachers are vital. We need to invest in education, not only through establishing Christian schools, and resisting state pressures to compromise our curriculum, but by establishing and maintaining Christian museums and monuments and developing more Bible-based textbooks and curriculum resources.

Dr. Peter Hammond

The Reformation SocietyP.O. Box 74 Newlands 7725Cape Town South AfricaTel: 021-689-4480Fax: 021-685-5884Email:
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Website: www.ReformationSA.org